


Your secrets made of copper, My shame of steel and stone

by LittleRedCosette



Series: Your daughters shall be soldiers, Your sons their patron saints [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Avengers Tower, Captivity, Character Death, Deaf Clint Barton, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 09:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19003381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedCosette/pseuds/LittleRedCosette
Summary: A man like Steve Rogers befriends a man like Clint Barton easily.It’s what happens after that’s difficult.





	Your secrets made of copper, My shame of steel and stone

**Author's Note:**

> Friends,
> 
> More rule breaking is happening. I've given into this MCU storm. My Inception stories _are_ still happening, but they're in pieces at the moment - they'll come together at some point.
> 
> Also, I've sort of plagiarised myself? I finished this and realised, _'holy shit, this is like your obsessive Arthur/Eames terror spiral',_ only with a Clint and Steve friendship instead. For anyone that's read my series Resplendence, I guess you know what happens here. For anyone who wants to read it, it's 101k words of sad, so maybe choose your moments to read my work, because it never really gets happier.
> 
> This is **not canon compliant** but it **does follow the MCU storyline from beginning to end**. There will be more gap filling in later stories. I think it makes sense anyway, but maybe it doesn't.
> 
> I also had no idea Clint/Bucky was a pairing I went for until I started writing this. It's not a huge part of this story, but it might well crop up again more centrally in another story, so I guess that's a thing now.
> 
> Kudos & comments are always a delight.
> 
> Yours,  
> LRCx

*

Here’s where they end up.

Sam looks him in the eye, a flinty expression, his soldier’s bitten knuckle posture. He stands at the end of Steve’s hospital bed and says without preamble,

“Did he go easy?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve can see the livid, futile bend of Bucky’s neck as he puts his face in his right hand. His fingers are splayed over his eyes, hiding them from view.

His left, of course, is gone.

Steve is angry, then. At Sam for having to ask, at Bucky for not wanting to. At himself, for knowing the answer.

“You know he didn’t, Sam,” Steve says, because he knows what that question means.

His voice is still rusty; it’s the only part of him still healing, and he wonders if that’s some kind of psychosomatic symptom overpowering the serum.

Bucky makes a noise Steve’s never heard before, a wrenching, strangling gasp.

“Steve,” Sam says, but before anyone can break the curse of their hesitation, there in the doorway is Tony Stark.

Tony, who Steve knew was here, somewhere, but honestly thought he’d never see again. Who’s looking at the three of them with a kind of disgust he used to reserve for villains and sugarless coffee.

“Bunch of soldiers,” he scoffs, with animated hateful glee, because that’s something he’s never been, and never could be, and he considers it his greatest virtue, Steve is sure of it. “Didn’t go _easy?_ You really think that’s a compliment, don’t you?”

His voice is hard, bladed, terrible. His eyes are spoiled with tears.

“Look,” Sam says.

Because he’s a fighter, yes, but he’s the peacekeeping kind. Not like Bucky. Hell, not like Steve, either.

He’s clearly about to say something supportive, admiring, _kind;_ something Steve doesn’t want to hear and neither does Tony. Steve tries to tell Sam to leave it, to let it alone because nothing can come from this, nothing that they might survive.

Unfortunately for everyone, Tony gets there first.

“They slashed out his eyes before they killed him,” Tony says, and his smile doesn’t matter because his tears spill over hot and fast, and Steve’s flinch is violent.

“You don’t,” _know,_ he tries to choke, but his torn-up throat is burning, and Tony’s always been the loudest of them, even without the incentive of his horror.

“They made sure your friend died in agony,” Tony snarls, as unkind as he’s ever been without a bounce of humour to hide his thorns. “They made sure he died afraid, and alone, and in _agony.”_

Steve can feel Bucky’s coiled anticipation, can feel him ready to leap right across Steve’s bed and get his one remaining hand around Tony’s throat.

“He was your friend, too,” Steve says, a cracked whisper, and even though it comes out in pieces, Tony gets it, Steve knows he does because a wash of pain and betrayal and outrage scars his stricken features.

Sam has stepped between them, his arm that’s not caught up in a sling outstretched. His fingers tremble, and Steve has one shimmering reminder of another trembling hand, missing an index finger and a thumb, before he’s _howling._

*

“Hey, Cap?” Clint says after a moment’s consideration.

“Yeah, Hawk?”

Clint’s eyes flash with humour. He tries to move his head, but the restraints hold him tight in place.

“I wish I’d thrown you out of the jet.”

Steve snorts, despite himself.

Every time he swallows, his Adam’s apple scrapes against the metal shards pressing against his throat.

“Yeah, Clint,” he says softly. “I know you do.”

*

He doesn’t go easy.

*

And yeah, that’s a goddamn compliment, as far as Steve is concerned.

*

Steve actually gets to know Bruce, first, in the early days.

Tony Stark ambushes him, two days after the final fight against Loki, and offers to kidnap him from SHIELD’s watchful eye.

Steve might have said no, if it hadn’t been for the way Tony shrugged with such false nonchalance that it was physically painful to witness.

So, Steve says yes, and tells Tony _This is too much_ when he sees the apartment Tony’s kitted out for him, but Tony just scoffs and says, _This? This is temporary, Cap. I need a few weeks to get the upper floors repurposed._

Only, then Tony seems to disappear into the oblivion of Stark Industries, leaving his two houseguests to rattle around in awkward companionship.

“Mind if I join you?” Bruce asks when he finds Steve sitting on the sofa, tapping a pencil on an empty page, trying to remember what was worth committing to paper seventy years ago.

It’s long gone midnight.

“Be my guest,” Steve says, gesturing to the empty room, the blank TV and the cosy furniture.

Bruce takes an armchair, pulls out a book called _In the Skin of a Lion,_ and immerses himself within moments.

Beyond the scratch of Steve’s pencil and the turn of Bruce’s pages, it’s almost three hours before either of them makes another sound.

It gets better, then. Easier, at least. They find an offbeat rhythm of routine.

Steve had been pretty sure he’d have nothing to say to Bruce, or vice versa. Yet, day after day, they share increasingly pleasant conversations. Conversations that go a long way to filling the chasm Steve woke up from the ice surrounded by.

Bruce is a good Stark to Rogers bridge. He can follow Tony’s flights of scientific fancy, and still find time to sit with Steve and share a meal, maybe recommend a documentary or even watch it with him, too.

Bruce takes things day by day, which he says is how he’d eventually come to grips with the reality of the Hulk, and Steve can sort of relate to that, in a way. He’s pretty sure this new world would have chewed him up and spat him out within a week if he’d let it.

*

Years later, when everything is different, when they’re running out of time, Bruce smiles at him from across the room.

He says, _“Nat,”_ and Steve feels Natasha’s tension cluster around her like a swarm.

Bruce looks terribly sad, the kind of sad Steve recognizes, and he knows that Rhodey’s told him, that he’s all caught up on just how totally the Avengers Initiative imploded, and why.

Steve doesn’t ask if Bruce blames him, too.

Even if he did, he’d never say it out loud.

*

The last thing Tony Stark says to Steve before everything is over is this: _I'_ _m pretty sure Hawkeye died wishing he’d never met you, Captain Rogers._

525 days later, half the world dies.

Steve doesn’t, though. Neither does Tony.

*

Steve Rogers might have died in 1925.

Seven years old, tasting lung tissue in the back of his throat as the coal burns out and the pipes burst for the third time that month.

He doesn’t, though. He survives.

It’s a reputation he maintains.

*

Tony Stark is abrasive, and fast, and astonishingly insecure.

Not even a week into accepting his offer of coming to stay in the lower, undamaged apartments of Stark Tower, Steve isn’t sure whether this new living arrangement is a chaotic blessing or a luxurious curse.

As _official_ as the Avengers Initiative status is, it’s not exactly green-light-for-go.

Thor is off-world, seeing to it that his brother is rightfully punished for his crimes in the Asgardian way, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, Black Widow and Hawkeye haven’t been seen since they vanished into SHIELD HQ within hours of Loki’s defeat. Steve had gone as far as enquiring about them when debriefing with Fury and Hill, but he’d been met with stone and silence.

He knows, technically, their names are on the initiative list.

He also knows that as far as Fury is concerned, Barton and Romanov are as much SHIELD property as the weapons they carry, and if he decides they make for better agents than avengers, he’ll pull the plug on their involvement in a heartbeat.

Stark’s made room for all of them, but he seems as clueless as Steve as to the whereabouts of the two agents, despite having a snooping AI at his disposal. He’s proving to be a tiresome, generous host, which is just about what Steve had expected.

There’s irritation at the absence of Barton and Romanov, which might just be masking a more genuine undercurrent of actual worry.

“Fury would tell us if they were hurt that bad,” Steve says when Stark brings it up again, halfway between crunching mouthfuls of cereal that he doesn’t even seem to be tasting. He's probably only left his lab at all after a series of preinstalled prompts from JARVIS, reminding him to eat at least once every thirty-six hours.

Stark gives him one of those condescending looks, like he’s considering making an intentionally vague joke, before changing his mind.

“Maybe,” he says. “But do you know what he wouldn’t tell us about? Top secret spy missions.”

“Fury’s not going to send them into the field again so soon,” Steve says, and when he says it, he believes every single word.

Only, that _look._ As if Tony Stark knows a hundred thousand things Steve Rogers couldn’t even guess at, which is maybe true, but Tony, he’s a civilian, what does he know of command? The bond between a leader and his men, it’s a visceral thing, as bright and demanding as the blood in their veins.

“Sure thing, Captain Nemo,” Stark mutters half-heartedly. “Your sunny optimism is truly an undiscovered element, you know.”

Steve doesn’t have a response to that one other than to say, very quietly into his cereal,

“I got that one.”

Stark grins with one side of his mouth. Whatever he sees with those quick dark eyes of his, it’s nothing Steve hopes he wants to share.

*

When they go down, Clint manages to keep the jet above water just long enough to sling their passengers out in a dizzying curl. He’s swearing blind and bracing himself for impact in the water and Steve manages to take hold of his forearm, takes hold so hard it leaves a vicious handprint bruise wrapped below his elbow.

It’s still there, greening at the edges, when Clint’s in a box in the wall.

*

“Hey, Cap?” he says, rusty and sore.

“Yeah, Hawk?”

There’s sweat on his cheeks, glistening like tears. It’s pooling in the pocket junction of his throat, and over his eyelids.

“S’gonna be OK, y’know,” he says. “Plenny ‘f robohands where we’re goin’.”

Steve grins. When he moves, the spikes nip at his elbows, just shy of deep nerves.

“You and Buck can get a matching set,” he says, which he hadn’t dared suggest the first time around, but now he wishes he had, because Clint’s face creases in a smile that wipes half the strain from his eyes.

He drifts, dozy, and Steve doesn’t try to wake him proper. Just listens to him humming _Purple Rain,_ and eventually, maybe, he joins in, too.

*

The day Steve meets Clint Barton is a hard one to forget.

A lot happens, the day Steve meets Clint Barton.

He is almost killed by the God of Mischief. He stops a Helicarrier from crashing to earth. He finds out how many buttons he has that can be pushed, and that unsurprisingly, Tony Stark has the blueprints to them all.

A wormhole opens above New York City, and nearly destroys the world.

*

And then there’s this. This small, insignificant thing, the day Steve meets Clint Barton, and isn’t killed by the God of Mischief, and doesn’t let a Helicarrier crash into the earth.

*

The dust settles in a thin mist over the New York City skyline, newly unbroken by wormholes and distant stars. In the aftermath, Steve Rogers declines an offer to return to SHIELD HQ.

Well, it’s more of an order than an offer, truth be told, but those rumours about Captain America being a stickler for the rules, they’re just that. Rumours.

He declines the order. He does it politely the first time, and the fifth. It’s only around the ninth time he starts to get shirty with the crowding attention of people he doesn’t recognise spouting names he does, demanding things he has no interest in giving. Not with blood still drying on his skin, which has already mostly knitted itself back together.

Eventually, though, SHIELD accepts it’s got bigger problems to deal with than a restless Captain America, and they leave him be.

Eventually, Steve finds himself alone with his thoughts, sitting on the top step of a short set of stairs that lead to an unfamiliar building. Of course, over half the city is unfamiliar, these days.

There are plenty of things to do. Plenty of things _he_ needs to do.

Thor hasn’t left his brother’s side since getting him on lockdown, determined – and rightly so – not to let him out of sight, certainly not in the hands of SHIELD.

Banner is cooling off somewhere, having been quickly shepherded out of sight by a loud, smug Tony Stark. At first, Steve had been worried about Stark’s grabby hands, fearing that maybe letting Stark commandeer a barely de-Hulked Banner might be a fast-track to trouble.

Only, Banner’s shoulders had loosened ever so noticeably the moment Stark placed himself firmly between Banner and SHIELD, and Steve had instead gotten another glimpse of Howard’s real son.

So rather than try to curb Stark’s efforts, Steve had made a point of cutting the approaching suits off at the pass, and he doesn’t think it was his imagination, the grateful little nod Stark gave him before his face was once more concealed by red and gold plating.

Now, Steve sits on his little concrete island, quietude like a fog between him and the rest of the world.

He sits there until something happens.

At least, until something happens that he takes notice of.

It happens with very little warning, and it happens so quietly, so carefully, that he’s pretty sure he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking in that direction already.

First, he sees Romanov.

Her red hair is already familiar, in a way that catches him off guard.

She’s elegance and terror. She moves with a strange, measured prowl, as if she’s considered every step before she takes it. Steve likes her, he knows that much already, although he gets the feeling she doesn’t really _like_ anybody.

Barton’s beside her.

He’s moving a little more stiffly, and though he’s walking barely a fraction of a step behind her, it’s clear enough he’s following her lead. Tall and broad, playing duckling to her short and lean.

There’s something incredibly soft about the way their movements could be matched, turn for step, like a dot to dot drawing.

Steve thinks he’d happily take either of them as his back up any day of the week.

Together, he has no doubt they’re nothing short of formidable.

He looks away, then. Appeased to see them walking side by side, bruised and scraped but otherwise whole.

He takes in the rest of the street. The very prospect of the clean up that is already underway is overwhelming. Huge chunks have been bitten out of New York, and the rush of victory that had dropped over their heads like rain after a drought feels meagre, now.

The win seems weak in the face of the destruction left behind.

For all the devastation he witnessed in the war, there’s something particularly painful about seeing his own city smashed up. At least he’d been spared that, last time around.

Before he can do anything else, however, his attention is drawn back to the middle of the street, needle to north, by a voice.

It’s Barton’s. Just two words.

One word, the same, twice.

“Nat,” he says, a hiccup on an exhale, then, _“Nat?”_ Louder still. Wrecked.

Steve looks back at them, past the upturned cars, the shredded sidewalk.

Two more SHIELD agents have joined them. Newcomers, judging by their dust-free gear. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder, and Romanov is square in front of them both. There’s no hiding the reluctant look that passes between the two unknown agents.

Barton has taken a step back, or maybe Romanov had stepped in front of him first.

Steve can’t see his face, but he had heard the distress in that second _Nat,_ and can see a tremor in the tightness of his body, some wreckage of emotion that hadn’t been there before.

Even when he’d been five seconds conscious from Loki’s mind control, he’d not hesitated with the reserve that’s now cording the back of his neck.

Steve’s always been surrounded by fighters, all the way back to his mom, her steely resolve and her oak root will. All the way there and back to Bucky Barnes, with those brawler’s knuckles and his stupid smart mouth.

He knows Barton’s type, the type held together by gun metal and determination.

Yet now, as Steve rises to his feet to get a better look, powerless against his own fight spoiling instinct that those three letters had reared in his gut, Barton shakes his head, his shoulders hunching to his ears as if shrinking away.

Whatever Romanov says to her confronters, it’s too quiet even for Steve’s sensitive ears. He sees her hand reach down and behind her, close to her leg.

For a moment, Steve thinks she’s going for a weapon and his heart flutters in his throat.

But no. It just stays there, palm out, fingers loose.

A signal. An offering.

When Barton doesn’t take it, she reaches back further without looking and grabs a leather strap hooked to the top of his arm guard with two fingers, holding him in place by the forearm.

 _“I’m sorry, Agent, we didn’t –”_ one of the agents says, but Romanov’s already turning her back on them, entirely confident that they wouldn’t dare make a move for her.

She’s only got eyes for her partner.

Whatever she sees in his downturned face, it makes her jaw clench.

Steve glances down at Barton’s arm to see she’s digging her fingers into his forearm, leaving short red lines with her nails. When he looks back up, he’s surprised to realise she’s looking right over Barton’s shoulder at him.

He tips his head, hoping she reads his offer in it.

She blinks at him, once. There’s a grim, plaintive look on her pale face. Leaning closer to Barton’s face, she whispers something Steve can’t hear. And, shivering, Barton glances over his shoulder, right at Steve, who holds still, frozen in the headlights of the look on the archer’s face.

Steve looks at him, at the terrible picture of devastation that’s ravaged his face.

He’s pasty under the grime and blood that’s smeared over his features. His eyes are red and glassy, full of surprise.

If Steve didn’t know better, he’d say Barton was _panicking._

In his momentary distraction, Romanov makes her move, wicked fast and without warning.

Barton notices, of course.

He turns quick. Quick enough to flinch, to make a grab for her elbow. Quick enough to demand a ferocious _“No, don’t –”_

Not quick enough to avoid the needle she stabs into his neck, though.

Barton goes down hard, a stagger of jerking limbs and a sound of protest dying in his throat. Steve is surprised by how cleanly Romanov catches him before he can hit the ground, although perhaps he shouldn’t be.

The archer’s eyes are closed, hiding the despair that had shone like stars in them, and Steve hates the relief he feels at that.

Romanov barks something at the two agents over her shoulder, and they make grumbles as they leave. She doesn’t look back at them, nor does she look over at Steve again. She’s only got eyes for her partner. His head in her lap and her fingers in his hair.

She stays there, still as a waiting predator, until a gurney is brought over, escorted by none other than SHIELD’s Maria Hill.

The two women share a look over Barton’s unconscious body, meaningful and silent. One that Steve knows instinctively isn’t his place to witness, much less to understand.

He looks away. Turns body and soul to jog down the steps and away, in the opposite direction to his would-be teammates.

It’s not his place. Not yet.

*

These things. They take time.

*

It’s twenty-six days before Steve sees either of them again.

*

_He died afraid, and alone, and in agony._

Tony hurls the accusation as surely and accurately as he does the repulsions from his suit.

Less than a month ago, he had looked at Steve with such betrayal, his eyelashes quivering heavy with self-pity and despair.

He’d murmured, woeful as a newly orphaned kid, _He killed my mom,_ and Steve had understood, he really had.

But this. He can’t understand this. Can’t accept it.

Because Barton, he had died. And yes, he’d been afraid, and he’d been in agony, but he hadn’t been alone. Steve had been there, right there, and Tony knows that. They all do.

All the same, it rings true. It hurts.

*

It’s a process, befriending assassins and spies.

Befriending Natasha Romanov feels a lot like befriending a jaguar, or a viper. It’s hard to forget she’s dangerous. Natasha exudes threat like a pheromone, and it will be a long time before she allows Steve even a glimpse of true vulnerability.

Even at four in the morning, when she's munching happily on a donut and doing something suspiciously close to _chatting,_ Steve never quite forgets who he’s talking to.

It’s not like that, with Clint.

Clint makes it easy to forget.

Which, Steve supposes, is another kind of dangerous altogether.

*

“God damn _me,_ Captain?” Hawkeye scoffs, snarling his disbelief, incensed as he rubs his jaw, which is already bruising. “How about _Thank you, Hawkeye?”_

His fury, it isn’t at all Steve’s which has always felt moral, felt righteous, if a little self-so.

It’s not like Natasha’s, cold and detached; it’s not like Bucky’s was, explosive and fiery.

Actually, it’s a hell of a lot like Tony’s, in a way. It feels personal, feels like outrage and hurt, like a bruise being pressed with a deliberate finger.

Steve punches him in the jaw, and it’s only later, when his apologies are waved away like wasps from a jam jar, that he realises Clint hadn’t even tried to stop him.

*

This is how a man like Steve Rogers goes about befriending a man like Clint Barton.

First, he talks to his therapist, to make sure he’s on the right track.

Then, he talks to Nick Fury, to make clear his intentions.

Last, he talks to Clint Barton.

*

He talks to Alma.

*

Alma, whom he’d called _Doctor Ricci_ only once, the day they met for the first time.

Alma is pretty young for a therapist. Or at least, Steve thinks as much, and had told her this in as polite a manner as he possibly could about fifteen minutes into their first session.

She'd laughed at that, a sound like water in a fountain, wingbeats in a cave.

He’d been seeing her for over three months when Fury came along with a god shaped thorn in his side, after a few failed attempts from other head doctors whose curiosity had overcome their professionalism.

Alma has no personal curiosity, it seems, or is simply a master of control. Steve honestly doesn’t care which one it is.

She dresses with intent for their appointments, and when Steve calls her out on it she only looks pleased with him, like he’s passed some kind of test she didn’t tell him she was setting.

It’s not flirtatious, nothing so unprofessional. It’s a different kind of intent.

The first day, she wears a white blouse, pretty similar to the kind Steve knew from women’s outfits seventy years ago. However, it’s tucked into a slim pair of pale blue jeans, the kind the women he grew up around wouldn’t have even considered wearing.

Her hair is dark brown, and there’s a streak of bright green running through it that only shows in certain styles.

Steve likes her a lot. He’d liked her from fifteen minutes into their first session, when she’d laughed heartily at his concerns and replied, _You’re pretty young for a World War Two veteran, Captain._

She’s not tentative with him, she’s not pushy. She doesn’t take notes in front of him and she doesn’t record their sessions, which Steve thinks might be against all protocol.

“You seem more settled today,” she says as she hands him a cup of coffee.

There’s a coffee machine in her office, and it’s one of the first pieces of modern technology Steve had comfortably learned to use, back when even the different scents in the air had been enough to keep him hiding from the world for days at a time.

“Do I?” he asks, and nods as he sits more comfortably in the seat in front of them.

There’s nothing separating them but air and sunlight from the window.

“I guess I feel it,” he agrees after a moment’s thought. “Things have been pretty calm, all things considered.”

“Considering what kind of things?” she asks, holding a glass of ice water in her left hand.

Her nails are painted a soothing shade of pink. She’s got an engagement ring that sparkles in certain angles of light, a beautiful dark pink stone she’d called a tourmaline, when asked about it. The white gold it’s embedded in makes a small sound whenever she taps her fingers on the glass.

Steve rubs his jaw with his wrist, tugs on his earlobe in a tired, well worn gesture.

“Well, Stark can be a bit… _much,_ really. He and Bruce, they seem to be getting along well, but I’ve given up trying to follow their science chatter. We haven’t heard from Thor yet, and we probably won’t for a while. There’s no real, _closure,_ I guess. You know?

“Loki’s gone, but we haven’t seen for sure he’s paying for his crimes. He could have escaped to some other planet, for all we know.”

Alma raises her eyebrows, a stock look of polite interest that is hateful on most people’s faces, and only mildly irritating on hers.

“And what would it look like, seeing Loki pay for what he’s done?”

Steve grins ruefully, until it turns into a grimace. There’s an undeniably bloodthirsty edge to that desire, one Alma has sensed immediately. One that doesn’t sit well with Steve in himself. He’s never thought of himself like that. Nevertheless, he must be, in a way.

He’s got this far, hasn’t he?

“I don’t want – I don’t mean, _kill_ him. I don’t know. I don’t want him on Earth, either. I’m glad he’s far away. I suppose in a way…”

Alma waits, as she always does. She has an unwavering gaze, not too intrusive, clear and bright as the ring on her fourth finger. Steve finds himself looking at it, as he often does when words are evasive.

“In a way, it would have been easier if we _had_ killed him in the fight.”

“That would have been closure, for you,” Alma surmises, and Steve nods uncomfortably.

They talk a lot about closure. Or rather, the lack thereof in Steve’s life.

He has a lot of loose threads; tattered red strings keeping him attached to anchors he should have left in the ice, but didn't, and now he can't detach himself from their weighty drag.

Alma says,

“You can find closure from what happened without killing Loki. It’s difficult, but as long as you are focussing on his fate, and not your own future, you are denying yourself closure. He owns it.”

“You mean he wins,” Steve says, and it comes out even more bitterly than he’d intended.

He glances back up at Alma’s face, embarrassed. There’s a cluster of moles at the right hinge of her jaw. When she shakes her head, the green streak peeks through her ponytail.

“I wouldn’t say that,” she disagrees gently. “But he does then have some form of power over you. Power it’s within your capability to reclaim.”

Her phrasing might be coincidental. It might be that Steve’s mind was already there anyway, or it might be that Alma knew all along where this was going. Whatever the case, Steve lets out an exasperated sigh, thinking of all the power Loki exercised over those still suffering for it most.

“We still haven’t seen or heard from Romanov and Barton, since Thor took Loki.”

Alma’s expression doesn’t change, taking the abrupt turn of subject in her stride. Her tourmaline glitters as she moves her glass between her hands.

“What’s worrying you most about them?” she asks reasonably.

Steve’s lowered his bar of expectation to accommodate this trait of hers. He doubts he’d ever find a therapist that isn’t unacceptably _reasonable_ all the time. That would probably be a little counterproductive.

He takes a deep breath, tries to conjure up the kind of confidence with which he’d assured Stark that the pair of them were just resting up, when they talked about it. It’s not the same, though. Like a virus the thought has undermined a great deal of what Steve had taken at face value from Fury’s impassive dismissal of his concerns.

“Stark thinks they’ve been sent on a mission,” he says, not quite hitting target at her question, but close enough. “I told him Fury wouldn’t do that, but now, I’m not so sure. I haven’t seen either of them, even when I’ve come back to HQ.”

He tries to find some reveal in her face. It seems unlikely he’d share a therapist with either of the agents, and even unlikelier that if he did, said therapist would give some sign of it. Still, he can’t help but wish Alma would throw him a bone.

It’s obvious she knows that’s what he wants. Her lips curve in an admonishing smile.

“Even if I had some insight into Special Agent Romanov and Special Agent Barton, you know I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it, Steve.”

“I know,” he says, grinning, though it’s hard to keep hold of the expression. “I’m still worried that Fury will take advantage of them. I saw them, briefly, after the fight. Barton, he didn’t look good.”

“You think Director Fury is in the habit of taking advantage of his assets?” Alma asks.

There’s a hot flash of anger in Steve’s gut that takes a few seconds to place. It’s so rare, that Alma gives away her status as an employee of SHIELD. When it happens, Steve always feels blindsided.

“See, that’s it, right there,” he says through gritted teeth, trying not to blame her but there’s nowhere else to put it. _“Assets._ You’ve done the same thing. They’re not _assets,_ they’re human beings. I’m worried about two human beings who are locked up here somewhere being treated like _assets.”_

“Locked up? Do you consider SHIELD to be a prison?” Alma asks, cheap and unfair and probably deserved.

“No,” Steve replies. He puts his cup down on the small table beside him too quickly, making a loud sound and sloshing coffee over the lip in a splash. “Sorry. I didn’t. Sorry.”

“It’s fine, Steve,” Alma says, putting down her own glass and waving at him to sit as she fetches paper towels. “It’s just coffee.”

She hands him the towels and lets him clean it up himself, which makes him feel infinitesimally better about behaving like a petulant child. She waits until he’s thrown the sodden towels into the trash can and returned to his seat before fixing him with a bold, expectant look.

When he only sheepishly glances down to her sparkling engagement ring, and thinks for the umpteenth time how lucky her fiancé is, she crosses her legs, clasping her hands over her knee.

“You worry that Fury, and by extension SHIELD, don’t have your teammates’ best interests at heart.”

That’s it, really. Plain and simple.

And this, this is why Steve likes her. Because he can say what he’s about to say without fear of the consequences. Because her notes are hidden, and because she’s not recording them right now.

“I know they’re not, _mine._ They’re not my team. Not yet, anyway. But they could be. They will be, I think. We worked well together. I’m worried because even from what little I saw of them in the fight, I knew they were good. They _are_ assets, in the most – most _literal_ sense of the word. I’d understand Fury wanting to keep them close to hand. But the look on Barton’s face, when those two agents came to talk to them – the look on Romanov’s when she was taking care of him…

“It would be easy to manipulate them, I think. Fury could hold them over each other’s heads. I think he _would,_ too, if he thought it would be to his benefit.”

“Director Fury often is forced to look at the big picture only. He makes decisions a lot of people aren’t happy with,” Alma points out, in that godforsaken _reasonable_ tone of hers.

Steve reaches for his coffee again, only to abort mission halfway and clasp his fingers tight between his thighs anxiously.

Alma fills his silence in that same, neutral tone of hers.

“When you went into the ice, Steve, that was a decision you made. A huge one. The person it affected the most was you, as well as the few others closest to you. The ripple effect was huge, and the difference you made to the war was profound. A lot of decisions that Director Fury makes, they are profound ones. They save a lot of lives. You don’t have much experience being out of the decision making, when the big picture is telling you what’s the right call. Not without being the person that _makes_ those decisions. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

He does. Of course he does.

He thinks about Peggy. He always thinks about Peggy. How she must have felt, when he made a decision that she had no control over, that would hurt her. It was a big picture decision.

Steve doesn’t know how he’d have felt, if their situations were reversed. If Peggy had driven herself to certain doom, and had forced him to accept her decision remotely.

“If Barton and Romanov,” he starts, but it tastes wrong in his mouth, to defend their cause using their surnames. They have fought with him, bled with him. They’re not _assets,_ they’re _people._ “If Clint and Natasha were making those decisions, I’d understand. But Fury –”

“But they did make those decisions, Steve,” Alma says, and she rarely interrupts him, which is maybe what brings him up so sharply, so surprised by the steel of her gaze. “Clint Barton has been with SHIELD for a very long time, now. Natasha Romanov, not as long, but still a number of years. They made the decision to join SHIELD, and to hand over a large portion of autonomy to SHIELD. That’s their choice. They are not prisoners, Steve. They are recruits.”

Steve doesn’t like that much better, truth be told. He’s had a chance now to read the entire Avenger dossier, an undoubtedly heavily redacted version of the events that led to the recruitment of the loose cannon inventor Tony Stark, the untameable and uncatchable Bruce Banner, the alien entity Thor and the two SHIELD special agents with skills to spare.

He knows that in all honesty, Barton’s recruitment was a lot closer to a rock and a hard place kind of offer, that if he hadn’t agreed to SHIELD’s offer, he’d have spent the rest of his days in exile, evading their capture.

That Romanov’s choice was to take Barton’s hand or the sting of his arrow, and that even then, the offer only happened because some spark of intuition told Barton to disobey orders.

It feels a hell of a lot different to Steve’s version of _recruits._

He’d been _recruited_ during a war. He’d signed up, he’d been eager to join the ranks, to walk side by side with his best friend into the honourable duty of defending the freedom of those who suffered its loss.

He hears something else, though. An earnest energy to Alma, despite the neutrality of her expression. The way she says _Clint Barton,_ the shape of her mouth around _Natasha Romanov._

If Alma Ricci isn’t their therapist now, she was, at some point in time. He’s sure of it.

“So, I shouldn’t be worrying about them?” he asks disbelievingly.

Alma smiles a half slant grin, one of the few genuine expressions she ever actually offers up with anything close to regularity.

“Worrying about your teammates is natural, Steve. It’s important. But idle worrying is futile. You can worry about your teammates more productively than talking to your therapist about them, don’t you think?”

Steve glances at her ring, at the shape of her smile and the slice of green in her hair.

When he smiles, it’s the closest thing to _real_ his smiles have felt since waking up.

“I can think of a few things,” he says.

Alma blinks innocently at him, sipping her ice water.

“So,” she says instead of asking what those things are. “You’re looking for closure. Something that doesn’t involve killing a Norse God.”

“Got any ideas?” Steve asks, and honestly, he means it in a sarcastic, Bucky-Barnes-nostalgia kind of way, the kind that makes his lungs dry up a bit, but Alma just tips one shoulder up in teasing encouragement.

“I can think of a few things,” she says, and when Steve laughs, it’s close to natural, feels almost right in his throat.

*

“Hey, Cap?” he says, louder than he probably means to.

“Yeah, Hawk?” Steve replies, and he makes sure to move his mouth properly, so Clint can read his lips easier.

Clint makes a retching sound, unfamiliar, green gilled.

“M’sorry,” he says, quieter than he probably means to.

“For what?” Steve asks, bewildered, full of impatience with nowhere to direct it other than at the undeserving man in front of him.

“He’s jus’ easy t’love, y’know?”

It’s a little lopsided, but the sentiment is clear, and Steve knows it’s not really Clint talking. It’s the concussion, the blood loss, the shock, a culmination of battered corners dragging out of him apologies that he doesn’t owe anybody, least of all Steve.

“Yeah, I know he is,” Steve says, and he’s not sure how to thank Clint for thinking that, too.

*

When Steve Rogers makes a shoddy attempt to rescue Clint Barton from the confines of SHIELD isolation a month after the Battle of New York, it goes something like this.

He shares some leftover takeout with Natasha. He goes to a pseudo-funeral. He sees Clint, very different to the man he fought beside four weeks previous.

Three days later, he confronts Nick Fury in a moment of sheer delusion, when he thinks he has a chance of actually getting what he wants from the man.

*

It happens like this.

Fury’s in his office, and Steve is allowed in without appointment or premise for a multitude of reasons, starting and ending with _Captain America,_ which he’d not anticipated abusing the power of quite so soon, but, well. Needs must.

He strides in, and Fury looks up at him with a professional curiosity that might befit a farmer staring out across dry fields. Nick has never been a man to notice his own height disadvantage when sitting, and this occasion is no different.

“Captain Rogers,” he says with dry humour, as if he had been expecting a visit, and for once Steve really doesn’t mind being anticipated.

If anything, the thought that Fury _knew_ this was coming only fuels the fire of Steve’s motivation.

“When will you be officially assigning Hawkeye to the Avengers Initiative?”

Fury sits back in his chair, considering the question at his leisure. His hands are clasped loosely on his desk, over an open folder of documents written in Cyrillic. Steve’s Russian is a rusty shade of fair, but reading it upside down would be a stretch, even if he wanted to try.

Fury doesn’t offer up a seat, which is just fine by Steve, because he really doesn’t want one.

“Cosying up with Stark in his tower isn’t a prerequisite of being an Avenger, Captain.”

There are days, plenty of days, when Steve’s tolerance for Grade A bullshit is high. After all the ponying around as Captain America he did for the morale boosters back in the forties he’s more than used to bureaucratic pussyfooting.

Today, unfortunately, is not one such day.

Today, Steve woke up at quarter to five in the morning feeling the rough catch-slip of his best friend falling out of his screaming grasp.

He drank three glasses of apple juice while staring at the mug tree Tony Stark bought and filled with novelty Hero Mugs, thinking about what Natasha had told him, and about the way Clint had smirked at her whispering as they played witness to Loki being carted off to Asgard; how he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses the whole time, and had kept his left wrist incredibly still.

He thought about the way Buck used to lie to dames about his dancing feet, just so he could surprise them with sharp and sure twirls; the way his laughter carried between the notes of the music.

By eight, he’d worked his way through the phantom sensation of Bucky’s eyes following him, destroyed two punching bags and run fast and far enough on a treadmill that JARVIS had actually interrupted to suggest he hydrate some more.

Steve doesn’t exactly understand the blurry lines between programmed software, artificial intelligence, and sentience, but he’s pretty sure he knows where on that scale JARVIS falls into.

So, all in all, while this is not a _bad_ day, it’s not a good day by any stretch, and Steve won’t engage in semantics with a man who is in charge of an organisation that exists on the premise of deceitful enterprise.

“If you want this _team,”_ Steve says with none too small a measure of force. “To really be a team, you need to let us have half a chance of trusting each other. Which means we need to actually work together.”

This seems to amuse Nick, if anything. His brow rises, and a cool smirk tucks up the corners of his lips.

“You did a pretty good job of trusting Barton already. Hadn’t been lucid five minutes and you had him flying your jet for you.”

Steve refuses to bristle at the myriad implications, but his jaw locks all the same. With some effort, he latches instead onto what he rather thinks Nick is purposefully avoiding.

“Yeah, I do trust him,” Steve says. “Because I know the difference between a turncoat and a man forced to do terrible things against his will. By _magic,_ no less. Can the same be said of your people?”

Nicks expression doesn’t so much as flicker, and Steve shouldn’t be surprised by that, but he’s infuriated anyway.

Of course Nick knows what’s going on under his own roof, knows what every ant in his hill is up to, from sanctioned missions to in-house squabbling. A little agent-agent bullying would be hard to keep under wraps. Steve’s also painfully aware that the odds of Nick stepping in are likely less than zero.

“You’re in luck, Captain,” Nick says, rather than responding to the question.

He stands up, beckoning Steve back out the way he came.

Steve, caught off guard, can only follow, his jaw clenched.

There’s rarely a hubbub of activity at HQ. By the time Steve had flown upstate, it had been gone midday, but there’s not exactly so much as a lunch rush around here. They pass a few stray individuals, a couple of small groups, and the obedient check-ins of _Sir_ and _Director_ and _Captain_ follow them like smoke signals.

It’s bizarre, in a way, to be surrounded by something that’s so close to military, yet simultaneously so _not._

It’s quickly clear that Fury’s leading them to the training rooms.

Rather than enter one, however, Fury thumbprints them into a small side door Steve’s never been in, which runs parallel to one of the biggest ranges.

Steve quickly finds himself entering a semi-dark room full of computerised equipment, a series of screens and two SHIELD employees.

One is a faintly familiar man with milky skin and fair hair that flops in curls over his wide forehead.

A pair of thick glasses hide his owlish eyes, and he greets Fury with a chipper accent that sounds like a childhood in Boston half-disguised.

The second is an older, olive skinned woman with very short hair and the curling lines of a tattoo snaking up the back of her neck out of her shirt collar, which Steve only notices because despite her verbal acknowledgment, unlike her colleague her eyes do not leave the huge screen in front of her when they’re interrupted.

No, not a screen.

A window.

A huge window that Steve now realises is the other side of one of the huge one-way mirrors than looks out over each of the training pens from high up. The small screens to either side of them provide a series of alternate angles by which they can monitor the activities in the range from all sides.

Steve follows the woman’s gaze and takes in the room at large.

There are only two occupants.

A thin man wearing simple gym wear stands with his back to the far wall, watching a second man with close attention.

The object of his scrutiny is moving fast through a circuited obstacle course, somersaulting and rolling and shooting target after target with a bow and arrow.

It’s hard to catch a glimpse of Barton’s face, but he’s moving well. Smooth, unhindered by any noticeable injury, Barton is a streamlined predator of intent, seemingly oblivious to his onlookers.

Steve glances at Fury, whose arms are crossed over his chest, looking about as enthused by the sight before him as he might at a brick wall.

The woman at the desk pushes down on a small tannoy button and says into the microphone,

“STRIKE BETA, Form Twelve-C.”

The course doesn’t move, the targets keep coming, but Barton changes course, redirects without hesitation. He even extracts a knife from somewhere on his person and sinks it into one of the X marks along the wall.

All noise from inside the training room is muffled, but audible. Barton hasn’t made a sound, but every target meets its maker, and though he’s clearly been at it for a while, judging by the arrows littering the room, he doesn’t falter.

Steve is tempted to ask Nick how this is doing anything other than proving his point, might well have done so if they been alone. Instead, he watches Barton move, and tries not to think about how differently he’d looked sprawled in Romanov’s grip, deadweight and bloody in the middle of a blown-up street in New York, or at the memorial ceremony two days ago.

Fury moves to stand to the woman’s right, reaching for a keyboard and pressing several buttons.

 _“Sir,”_ the woman says, somewhere between confusion and alarm.

Fury hits execute before she can say more.

This time, another voice comes through the speakers in the training room. It’s pre-recorded, but sounds as clear and natural as the woman’s order had been.

_“Hawkeye, hold your fire.”_

Before Steve has time to think _I know that voice,_ before the recording has even finished speaking, something happens first.

Barton stumbles.

It’s the closest to graceless he’s been this whole time, landing prematurely in a roundhouse swing that forces him into a shoulder roll before he can return to his feet.

Barely missing a beat, he turns to look directly up at the one-way mirror and Steve finally has a chance to get a good look at his face.

His matching set black eyes have faded, though not completely. His expression is startlingly blank.

The recording has barely finished the word _fire_ when Barton nocks one last arrow and shoots it directly at the window.

It lands exactly in front of Fury’s face, which Steve desperately wants to chalk up to a lucky shot, only, he doesn’t really think Barton’s ever had one in his life. The arrow sticks half an inch into the glass, not penetrating all the way through.

Barton’s chest is heaving but he’s not out of breath.

 _“Happy now?”_ he says, loud, not quite a shout.

Then he drops his bow to the mat he's standing on with a clatter, followed by his quiver, and stalks out of the training room, ignoring the man by the wall as he approaches.

It’s only once Steve looks back at Fury, whose gaze hasn’t left the place where Barton stumbled, that Steve places the voice.

Coulson. It was Phil Coulson’s voice.

A sickening rush of protective horror hits Steve hard on Barton’s behalf. For a moment, he chokes in his indignation, before he forces out,

“Was that really necessary?”

By the looks of it, the woman to Fury’s left shares Steve’s doubt.

“Munro, Carrow, get me Barton’s final results by seventeen hundred hours,” Fury says. “Captain, walk with me.”

Steve very, very nearly refuses.

He can feel his pulse in his wrists and his throat. He’s consumed by a kind of second-hand betrayal, can’t help but wonder if Fury would pull something like that on him, if he could. Get a recording of Peggy, or Bucky, just to see what hearing their voices would do to Steve.

It’s downright cruel, and Fury, he didn’t even seem all that phased by Barton’s response which, the more Steve considers it, was a hell of a lot more measured than he thinks he’d have managed in his position.

Tongue dents in his teeth, Steve follows Fury back out to the thin, empty corridor.

They walk side by side, slower than before, Steve’s bristling and Fury’s indifference stretching the distance between them like miles instead of inches. When they reach the elevators, Fury dismisses two junior agents who are already there, waiting.

They scurry away obediently, and Steve definitely isn’t imagining the quiet amusement in Fury’s bare expressionless face. Another time, he might even have felt it, too.

Not right now, though.

“Sir,” Steve says as the elevator takes them up, but Fury cuts him off.

“Not yet, Captain.”

Steve very nearly bites through his tongue.

 _Yet_ turns out to be once they are in the small anteroom that precedes Fury’s office.

Fury reaches for the handle to his office, opens the door a crack, but seems to change his mind. He lets go, turns back to Steve with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Just what do you think Barton stands to gain, skipping off to play house with you and Stark?”

Steve doesn’t have a response to that that isn’t _Everything you can’t give him,_ so he settles for overlooking the question entirely.

“Sir, I fail to see what possible reason Medical _or_ Psych could have for not signing off on Barton’s release. And even so, how do you expect him to recover when –”

“Captain Rogers, Medical and Psych officially signed Barton’s release from observation six days ago.”

Steve blinks, astounded, the rest of his words jumbling to nothing in his throat.

Fury seems amused by his silence, even tilts his head in what can only be a cocky display of how much he enjoys being an asshole.

“Does Barton know?” Steve asks through gritted teeth.

“Haven’t seen fit to inform him yet,” Fury says frankly, completes the dig with a nasty little shrug that burns in Steve’s gut like a punch. “The truth is, Steve, Clint Barton has never stayed where Medical has told him to for this long without critical injury before. It’s a little unprecedented.”

Fury laughs a wry, terrible sound before continuing.

“Who knows? Maybe a little Norse discipline has actually done us _all_ a favour.”

Steve recoils from his words, can barely formulate a thought worthy of such a terrible accusation, let alone words, before Fury pushes open his office door completely, gesturing him to follow inside.

Steve’s stomach drops.

Standing in the middle of the room, his face sweaty and expressionless and bone white, is Clint Barton.

*

_Hey, Cap?_

Yeah, Hawk?

_I wish I’d thrown you out of the jet._

Yeah, Clint. I know you do.

*

Clint doesn’t say anything, at first.

Standing in Fury’s office, his blue-grey eyes fixed on the man with such forceful emptiness it’s like staring into that wormhole in the sky, he looks ten years younger and twenty years older than Steve’s ever seen him.

Nick doesn’t even flinch.

“You got something for me, Barton?” he asks, sounding entirely unsurprised by Clint’s presence.

As if he’d known Clint would be there, as if he’d saved all his jibes for when they could be overheard.

Christ, as if the man wasn’t enough of an asshole already.

“My official request that Shaun Munro be demoted to pencil sharpener, sir,” Clint says after a lengthy pause.

His voice is smooth, clear, untroubled, as far from the shaken rage of not fifteen minutes ago, standing in a training room.

_Happy now?_

“That would be your third time this month,” Nick replies, stepping incautiously into the room.

“Fifth,” Clint corrects. “Including off-the-record ones.”

It’s only now, as Nick retakes his seat, that Clint looks at Steve.

The flatness of his eyes in unsettling, as is the distant way he nods his respect and says,

“Captain Rogers, sir.”

Steve doesn’t know how to respond to that, at first. Calling him _Clint_ would sound disrespectful in the face of Steve being afforded the acknowledgement of his rank, but Steve really doesn’t want to stoop to Fury’s level of calling him _Barton._

And _Special Agent_ would just be plain farcical.

Of course, that’s when Steve realises, mentally kicking himself, and Fury for good measure.

“Hawkeye,” he says with a returning nod.

It’s entirely possible that the tight mask of Clint’s non-expression softens, ever so slightly. He looks back at Fury, who’s returned to leaning back in his chair with a challenge in his smug almost-smirk.

Something changes, then, in the air between the men. Steve feels it crackle, like lightning, like hatred.

Clint lets out a tiny laugh, pained in its smallness.

With a shake of his head at the floor, Clint reaches into the collar of his damp shirt, pulls out something on a chain around his neck and right off his head. Steve tries not to look at it as Clint flings it with some strength at Fury, who catches it with one hand and drops it into a drawer of his desk.

Clint turns to leave, walking past with his purple ringed eyes empty and his mouth set.

“Hawkeye,” Fury says, for the first time with something close to irritation.

Clint stops in the doorway of the office, but doesn’t turn around. His entire body is rigid with the effort of his self-control.

Fury eyes the back of his head, his brow furrowing with disapproval. Steve watches him, too.

There are pockmark bruises on his arms. His dark blond hair is soaked at the nape of his neck, and when he breathes, his shoulders seem to broaden. For reasons inexplicable to himself but mercifully easy to ignore, Steve wants nothing more than to tug him fiercely into a tight, protective embrace.

Before the silence can drag too awkwardly, Fury says, uncompromising and unforgiveable,

“It’s family only. You know the rules.”

Steve’s at the wrong angle to see what mars Clint’s face, then, but there’s no way of missing how his jaw dips to his chest, the back of his neck pink.

Clint leaves. He doesn’t turn, or flinch, or give any other outward sign of having heard Fury at all.

The door to the office has a latch. It snickers shut with such anticlimactic softness, Steve wants nothing more than to slam something on Clint’s behalf.

When he looks back at Nick, all the man’s humour and annoyance have vanished.

“You know, for a spy, you’re not exactly subtle,” Steve says hotly. “And you’re laying it on pretty thick. Unless you actually _want_ him to never come back?”

Nick remains unmoved. He gives Steve another hard, quarrelsome look.

“Some people need something to push back against,” he says without pleasure or pain.

Steve already knows that, though. Doesn’t he?

He knows Barton’s type, after all. And yes, some people, they don’t take to bolstering and encouragement the way they maybe should. They need to be bullied into action, need something to kickstart the antibodies that keep them fighting.

“Sir, with all due respect,” Steve says. “That was still a dick move.”

Fury doesn’t laugh, but he does stop glaring, which Steve figures is the equivalent.

“Should’ve known not even you were immune to Stark’s charming influence,” Fury retorts.

Steve sighs, shakes his head and makes for the door.

He stops in the doorway, in the exact same spot as Clint had, and refuses to consider chasing after the man.

“You’ve been reading the comics too long, Director,” he replies, leaving quickly, before he can let slip something less polite.

*

Steve tries his best not to be disappointed when Clint doesn’t show up at Stark Tower that night.

Or the next night. Or the next one. Or the one after that.

*

Sixteen days later, Clint shows up without warning or ceremony.

His bruises are gone, and he’s carrying only a quiver, a bow and a duffle bag. He’s wearing an obnoxiously vivid Captain America t-shirt and ripped jeans; there's a chain around his neck that's tucked into the collar of the shirt and a dark leather strap around his left arm, just below his elbow.

“Please tell me you took a cab with all that,” Stark says, not even attempting to hide his glee.

Clint smirks, shrugging innocently and slumping in a catlike sprawl on the empty half of a sofa amidst the crowd of Avengers, with all the normalcy of having done it his whole life.

“Subway,” he says, to which Tony looks if possible even more thrilled.

Natasha places her feet in his lap, and he digs his thumbs into her arches without even looking at her.

He doesn’t look at Steve, either, right up until he _does._

Clint’s eyes aren’t flat or cold anymore. They’re bright with mirth, and when he looks at Steve it’s with unreserved energy and attention.

“Cap,” he says with a tip of his imaginary hat.

“Hawk,” Steve responds in kind, and it’s the start of something.

Something important, and breakable, and good.

*

And the next morning, when Steve finds himself staring at the mug tree again.

In strolls Hawkeye, pleased as punch, wearing sweatpants and a faded T-shirt bearing a logo Steve should probably have learned by now, the lolling tongue painted with stars and stripes out of a pair of open lips.

He plucks the Hulk cup from its branch.

He makes, pours and drinks an entire pot of coffee without really pausing at all. It’s only on the second pot, when Steve hasn’t moved other than to stare at him with some disbelief, that Clint pours some to share.

“We’re not going to talk about it,” Clint says, and he probably doesn’t mean the flagrant overconsumption of caffeine.

Steve feels his face do something, but he has no idea what, only that it ruffles Hawkeye’s feathers something awful.

“It’s not for you to know,” Clint corrects.

Only, why else would Natasha have mentioned it?

He doesn’t say as much. They both know why.

“It’s good to have you back, Clint,” Steve says, which might be odd, because they never exactly _had_ him to begin with, not really.

If he thinks so, though, Clint doesn’t say as much. He just claps Steve’s shoulder, clinks their mugs together in cheers and walks out of the kitchen without another word.

*

Later, much later, when Steve punches him in the face and says, _God damn you, Barton,_ what’s worst is that for those few seconds, he means it, and Clint knows it, and maybe even believes it.

 _God damn me?_ he asks, and his voice is brittle with hurt that has little to do with his red jaw.

*

The problem might start there. Or maybe it’s some other time.

“I got a debt to pay,” Clint says when Steve calls, and he comes to Germany willingly.

 _You don’t owe me anything,_ Steve should have said, but he didn’t. Why didn’t he say that? Why didn’t he say, _You don’t owe either of us a god damn thing, Hawk._

Clint comes to Germany.

He gets arrested, even though he’s spent three decades fearing nothing more than incarceration. Then he gets rescued, because he’s another idiot who trusts Steve Rogers to get it right.

He dies screaming, and Steve dreams about it for the rest of his life.

*

“You know what I thought, when it happened?” Natasha says.

Her eyes reflect all the things Steve hasn’t dared speak, not in five years of this terrible half a life.

“What did you think?” he asks, despite not wanting to know.

She takes one more bite of peanut butter sandwich and pulls a face of displeasure.

“I thought, _Thank God he’s already dead.”_

In over a decade, he’s never seen her cry, but she’s come close three times. This might be the fourth.

“I was _glad_ he was dead,” she says, a curling tone of barbed wire that wraps them together in a cutting embrace.

The familiar pang of grief has softened with time, however much it probably shouldn’t have.

The truth is, when Bucky turned to dust before his eyes, Steve’s first reaction was _Please don’t leave me._ Later, it was _Come back, come back to me._ His third, though, was _At least Clint was spared this._

It’s not being glad he’s dead. That’s not what this is.

Still, he can see why Natasha would see it that way.

*

When Steve wakes up in a hospital bed in Wakanda, two years before the end of the world, Bucky is there.

He looks like he hasn’t slept since Steve left.

Steve sits up with difficulty, sluggish, exhausted.

“Buck,” he says, dry and thick with the fog of unconsciousness.

Bucky lifts his head.

His eyes are bloodshot, his lashes sticky with tears. There’s blood on his lips, shred marks to fit his teeth perfectly, and he shivers visibly.

“Hey, Stevie,” he says, and it comes out harsh, sodden, grave.

Bucky’s hand is rough and strong on the back of his head, his clenched knuckles brushing the nape of his neck.

For a moment, just a moment, Hawkeye sits inside Schrodinger’s unopened box, and the suspended weightlessness of it is bliss.

“Where’s Clint?” Steve asks, his mind a swamp of dismembered memories.

Bucky crumples, his head drops down too late to hide the spill of his tears.

Then, Steve remembers. He remembers all of it.

*

Here’s how a man like Steve Rogers goes about befriending a man like Clint Barton:

He keeps his promises, even when he can’t.

*

And here, here’s how a man like Steve Rogers finds himself living with a team he doesn’t know, a team he will love, and one day loathe with equal despair:

“I like it,” a voice says, caught in the breeze that’s brushing from the freeway they can hear, but not see, hidden as it is by a long line of foliage.

Steve turns to see Tony Stark standing a short distance away, back in his bespoke Italian suit instead of a titanium alloy one.

There’s a bruise around one of his eyes, but he looks otherwise unharmed following the events of New York, and Loki. He even has something of a swagger as he walks forwards, hands in his pockets and sunglasses on his head.

He gestures at Steve, flapping at his leather jacket and the motorbike behind him.

“A lot more Steve McQueen, though I’m sure you do a fine Ginger Rogers, too,” Stark says.

It’s either intentionally courteous of Stark to offer up a reference Steve fifty percent understands, or discourteous of him to make one he fifty percent doesn’t.

Caught in between a quip about dancing and a standardised dismissal in lieu of confusion, Steve just replies with a shrug, keeping his hands in his own pockets. He doesn’t possess the same need for smart remarks that Tony Stark has built one heck of a persona on, or perhaps he did, once, and has just forgotten how to implement that reflex.

Steve doesn’t think he’s the only one feeling awkward here. It seems rude not to offer a handshake at least, and yet, is a handshake entirely appropriate, after fighting aliens with someone, after watching them fly a nuclear warhead up into space?

For once, at least, Stark seems as out on a limb as Steve feels most of the time since waking up.

“How you doing, Stark?” he asks, before he can embarrass them both by apologising for any rather assumptive opinions of the man’s character he might have made, not all that long ago, only to be proved very wrong.

“Oh, you know how it is, Cap,” Stark replies brusquely. “You save the world, you eat shawarma, you make Nick Fury’s life difficult by hiding his toys in your tower.”

For a moment, Steve thinks he’s talking about the Tesseract. He opens his mouth, full of stern judgement to be passed with disappointment. Just when he honestly thought he’d been _wrong_ about the man.

However, he’s interrupted by an unexpectedly nervous, twitching movement from Stark, who asks,

“What do you say?”

It seems like a strange leap, one that leaves Steve spinning before he realises that Stark isn’t talking about the Tesseract at all.

He’s talking about _Captain America._

Steve raises his eyebrows suspiciously, prompting another fake shrug.

“Come on, Rogers,” Stark says dismissively, even as he pulls back. “I guarantee the view is better from my place than whatever bugged facility SHIELD has given you.”

Later, Steve will admit, the earnestness of Tony Stark’s offer, hidden behind bristles as it is, went a long way to making his mind up for him.

“Think about it,” Stark says before he can give an answer. “JARVIS will let you in if you decide you need some roomies. You remember my place, right? Big tower. Used to have my name on it.”

*

Steve moves into Stark Tower, which isn’t going to be called Stark Tower anymore, he is reliably informed by a smiling Pepper Potts, who refuses to be called _Ma’am,_ even though Steve isn’t sure how else to express the sincere and all-encompassing respect and gratitude he feels towards her from the very moment she shakes his hand.

*

“Isn’t it nice to have all the family together?” Tony says, and it’s rolled in salt, the way he says it, but Steve is onto him.

He’s utterly genuine in his sarcasm.

“Can’t wait until Thanksgiving,” Natasha retorts dryly.

Steve isn’t willing to tempt fate by responding to that one.

Across the room, Bruce, Clint and Thor are bickering spectacularly over the appropriate way to cook a ham.

“What are you _doing,_ you _monster!”_ Clint cries, goggle eyed with despair as Bruce gives the ham another glazing with the honey paste.

Steve had been worried at first about insensitive bandying around of certain words, particularly in relation to Bruce. To his and perhaps everyone’s surprise, however, Bruce if anything has taken better to Clint’s lack of a filter than anyone else.

“Sit your punk-ass down, Barton,” Bruce says with audible amusement. “You were raised by actual circus clowns. You wouldn’t know good meat if it slapped you around the face.”

At this, Clint actually drops to his knees, his hands on the kitchen island worktop and his face split with laughter.

 _“Brucie,”_ he cries, hiccupping over Thor’s deep concerns about how small the ham is. “So, many, dick jokes. You don’t even know.”

“Oh, I’m sure I do,” Bruce remarks with a very small smirk. “Thor, I promise, this is the biggest hunk of pig they had in all of New York State.”

Thor, nonplussed by Bruce’s insistence, folds his arms.

“It’s a piglet,” he replies stubbornly, eyeing the substantially sized ham with great disdain.

Clint has one hand on Bruce’s hip and the other on his own forehead as he laughs raucuously.

Natasha is looking at him with the kind of exasperation that Steve has come to learn generally precedes knives being brandished. Somehow, though, he gets the impression that in relation to Clint Barton, this particular look is better translated as,  _I would kill for you._

There’s something like home happening here. There’s something like peace.

“Nat. _Nat._ Back me up here,” Clint is saying as he pulls himself back to standing using the worktop and an indignant Bruce Banner’s arm. “Don’t I make a great barbecued ham?”

“We almost had barbecued Hawk last time you made it,” Natasha reminds him, looking terribly unimpressed.

“Eh, what’s life without a little risk?” he says, sparing a glare for Bruce’s ham and promptly stealing a carrot strip straight out of the sizzling pan.

Not for the first time that Steve has witnessed, Clint promptly forgets that whatever mild protection from burning his calloused fingers have, the same is not true of his mouth.

“Fuck me _hot – what hot –”_ he cries, gulping the carrot too quickly and choking at the burn.

Bruce, understandably, has little sympathy for this and simply pushes him in the direction of the nearest refrigerator.

“Barton, we’ve got sensitive ears in the room!” Tony shouts, side-eyeing Steve with glee.

Tony’s been taking particular delight at reminding everyone to mind their manners around Steve, ever since Steve made the mistake of saying _Gosh_ in response to an unexpected debrief from Maria Hill.

Steve can only hope he has the self-control to never accidentally correct his teammates’ language as he does his own, because Tony might actually hurt himself in his delight.

As it is, Steve does his best to ignore him. So does Clint, who is busy pouring a huge glass of milk and gulping it down.

Faintly, gently, so quietly it is certainly only for super soldier ears, Natasha murmurs,

_“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, The Amazing Hawkeye.”_

It’s worth Tony’s resentful frown and Clint’s suspicious scowl, when Steve bursts out laughing, and refuses to say why.

*

“Hey, Cap?” he says.

His eyes are half-closed, but Steve knows he’s watching.

“Yeah, Hawk?”

Clint’s breath rattles like an infection in his lungs.

“Tell my kid she’s a rockstar.”

*

Steve hadn’t even known there was a kid to tell.

*

Steve tells Bucky, _They’ll be OK. I’ll go back for them._

Bucky says, _I love him. You understand, Steve? I love him._

*

Men like Steve Rogers, they maybe shouldn’t befriend men like Clint Barton.

*

(It’s imbalanced, they are imbalanced. It’s not fair at all.)

*

Clint never really moves into Stark Tower when it gets repurposed, nor the Avengers Base when it gets built.

He seems to exist between places, doesn’t really leave much of a mark beyond the holes in the range targets from his arrows.

There’s a mug that sits in the cupboard in the kitchen. It’s white porcelain, cheap but sturdy, and painted on either side are the words _The Amazing Hawkeye_ in faded purple glitter.

It arrived at Stark Tower over three weeks before Clint did, along with Clint’s best friend.

*

When Clint is alive, Natasha is possessive of her Hawkeye mug.

It’s the only belonging she brings with her that she takes proper care of that isn’t a weapon.

When Clint is dead, the mug gets left behind, much like everything else.

*

Natasha Romanov is someone that Steve, were he a less cautious man, might have fallen in love with.

There are a lot of things to admire about Natasha, but more than her striking beauty, her dry humour, her knack for always knowing where the nearest open bakery is, there’s this:

Her thickly veiled compassion. Her astounding resilience. Her absolute competence in everything she does.

There are just enough parts of Natasha to recognise from Margaret Carter that Steve feels a twinge of longing, sometimes.

The truth is, she’s nothing like Peggy, and Steve needs that. Needs to not see Peggy is every woman he admires, or he’ll spend the rest of his days breaking his own heart, over and over and over.

*

_Hey, Cap?_

Yeah, Hawk?

*

A Wednesday, close to daybreak.

The safehouse is cramped, uncomfortable, not quite in disrepair.

Steve gets up once the last of his abrasions have healed up of their own accord, stretches out his aching joints and heads for the living room. The entire apartment is cold, which Steve has learned not to be bothered by, but there’s not denying that when he goes to sleep cold, he never really believes he’s going to wake up again.

He stops in the doorway, pulled from his breathless nighttime anxieties by the sight that presents itself before him.

It’s easy enough to tell them apart. Physically, Clint and Natasha are too dissimilar to actually blend into each other.

Her left arm is tucked up under his right, hooking over his shoulder so that her fingers splay over the long bruise of his clavicle. She’s pale, and the marks of the fight stand out fresh even in the half-light of predawn. He’s not lost the tan from a six-week job in Morocco he’d barely slept off before coming out to find them.

His hair’s still sun-bleached, hers is spread in a red halo over his chest.

Steve isn’t sure how long he stares for, perhaps not more than thirty seconds.

Clint’s eyes open. There’s nothing slow or sleepy about it; it’s deliberate. He opens his eyes and looks at Steve.

They look at each other.

Steve opens his mouth, but thinks better of it. Instead, a little self-conscious, he lifts his hands and signs, probably quite clumsily,

_Thanks for being here._

If Clint is surprised by the sentiment, or the way it’s expressed, he doesn’t show it. He nods, almost imperceptibly, not moving his hands from where they rest, one between Natasha’s shoulder blades, the other on the prominent curve of her lower back.

Before Steve can do anything more, one of Natasha’s hands lifts up and covers Clint’s eyes, forcing them shut again.

Steve grins, and Clint huffs into the crown of Natasha’s head.

He leaves them to it. Slips back into the kitchen, through to a short balcony where he can see all the way to both ends of the street.

This is only his second mission with Hawkeye and Black Widow, outside of official Avengers business.

He senses this quiet moment is more than a moment’s lapse in vigilance. This is deliberate, too. A well chosen, perfectly executed display of absolute trust. It’s a moment of faith, which Steve would not take advantage of for all the world.

*

When half the world goes up in dust and smoke, when half the universe is dead and Steve is still alive because the cosmos is a cruel and terrible trickster, Steve finds her on the sofa of his apartment, three months later, curled up over the cushions in almost exactly the same position.

For a moment, he mistakes it for vulnerability, for seeking comfort.

It’s not.

She’s not looking for solace, she’s not vulnerable.

She’s keeping guard.

*

“Hey, Cap?” he says.

They’ve poured something pungent over the stumps of his fingers, antiseptic, nose wrinkling strong.

Steve can’t stop looking at them, keeps waiting for the necrosis to set in.

“Yeah, Hawk?” Steve replies.

“Why you worrying?” he asks, disingenuous and brave. “You know she’s on her way.”

*

By the time the cavalry arrives, Clint’s been dead for over thirty hours.

*

The last thing Steve says to Clint is: _Hawk, it’s OK, I’m here, I’m here, please, please, I’m here, I’m here._

The last thing Steve says to Clint that he can lip read is: _Hold on, Hawk. You can hold on. Just a little longer. I promise. They’re coming. She’s coming._

The last thing Steve says to Clint that he can hear is: _You have to know I’m happy for you. Both of you. You deserve to be happy._

*

Happiness for Clint Barton isn’t what Steve had expected it to be.

It looks like this.

A broad house, with a semi-repaired, disused barn. Several fields that might be good for horses or cattle. A wrap around veranda cluttered with furniture. A copse of cherry blossoms and a huge oak tree with a tyre swing that looks about as old as Steve.

Remnant signs of another person’s presence.

A note on the refrigerator door stuck with four tacky capital city magnets that reads:

 _Porch steps fixed._  
Your handy man is the best.  
Don’t forget the 17th!!  
L  
xx

Steve reads it, nonplussed. Lets Tony do the inane accusatory chatter. His own head is too full of dancing bells to think of anything more than the scent of Peggy’s perfume clogging his nostrils.

Clint’s only response to Tony’s snip is, “I don’t owe you any kind of explanation, Stark. Now, do you want the room with the west window or the north?” which sounds unfair but actually isn’t.

They are all sporting bruises that can’t be seen, as well as plenty that they can.

Clint assigns them rooms and half-heartedly warns them about not overusing the hot water, and Steve might be content to make peace with that.

Except Clint, he grabs him by the elbow and says,

“Cap, there’s something I gotta show you.”

The _something_ is an underground bunker that looks a lot more like a Hawkeye hideout than the house does.

That’s not it, though. It’s what’s inside the bunker that’s important.

It’s the  _someone._

*

_Hey, Cap?_

Yeah, Hawk?

*

Inside the bunker beneath the house that is home, that makes no sense, Clint says,

“God damn _me,_ Captain?”

He's hostile and hacked, rubbing his jaw. Steve is sickeningly aware he could easily have taken Clint's jaw right off his face, if Clint hadn’t mostly dodged the blow of his fist.

“How about _Thank you, Hawkeye?”_ Clint says, his eyes huge and his pupils blown.

They’re standing in the main bunker space that must be somewhere below the barn, surrounded by weapons and tech,

On a mounted screen, they can see a live feed from another building on the opposite side of the four acres of land Clint’s somehow managed to wipe off the map.

On the screen, as they watch, James Buchanan Barnes is fixing a broken window pane of the little cottage.

Steve’s head is pounding, his hands are clenched, distressingly empty.

Months. _Months_ he’s spent looking, has wasted them sending Sam here and there and everywhere in between, looking for some clue. And Bucky’s been here all along. He's been here, with Clint, safe, with Clint, and Clint, he hasn’t said a word. Not one word.

“For what? Lying to me?” Steve snaps, restless and terrified and yes goddammit, pissed as all hell.

“I don’t know,” Clint scoffs, gesticulating wildly at himself, and at Steve, and at the screen. “How about thanks for _not_ turning your best friend into a pincushion when he broke into my house in the middle of the night armed to the teeth? For helping him get his head together. For giving him some fucking time, and space, and support while he tried to shake off seventy fuckin' years of HYDRA?”

Steve feels wretched with his own anger.

He knows, deep beneath his outrage, that Clint’s right. He knows that he _should_ be grateful.

The adrenaline of his surprise hasn’t burned out of him yet, though, and it’s with caustic hurt that he sneers in unrecognisable disdain,

“Oh, and you just opened your home to the Winter Soldier, just like that, did you?”

Clint’s sharp grey eyes narrow, deadly cool and refusing.

“No,” he replies, ice in his mouth. “I opened my home to _Bucky Barnes,_ as you well know, Captain. Don’t you, of all people, _dare_ call him that.”

This time, a thin tendril of shame cuts and curls through the heat of Steve’s ire. The betrayal on Clint’s face has given way to a dominating look of judgement, his vowels snagging heavy on the catch of a protective tone.

Steve shifts his arms, forcing them to loosen, feeling chastened.

“That’s not – I know that’s not who he is.”

Clint nods, confident in his agreement. There’s youngness in his face and in his eyes that often belies his age, but not now, not here.

Now he sighs, his shoulders dropping with disappointment as he says,

“But you think I wouldn’t? You honestly think _I_ would judge anybody based on the things they’re forced to do, when someone else is pulling the strings?”

The quiet of it, how _tired_ he suddenly sounds, guts the last of Steve’s temper, leaving him feeling hollow and embarrassed in the cool, underground air. Because it’s not negligence or mistrust that has kept Steve from recruiting Clint to help in his search with Sam, but rather, it felt too personal a demand, too close to stinging Clint’s own bruised history, to ask so much of him.

He should have known better than to underestimate Clint. Had in fact proudly considered himself among the few people in Clint’s life who made sure _never_ to underestimate him.

As the shock wears off, and the shame uproots his indignation, Steve can feel little bursts of elation and relief starting to grow.

Because there, right there on the screen, is _Bucky._

And he’s not only _alive,_ and _awake,_ and _not killing anyone,_ but he actually looks _good._ He looks kind of great, given the circumstances.

He’s drowning in a faded blue sweater, his long dark hair tied back out of his face and he's wearing a pair of jeans caked in mud to the knees. There’s no audio from the feed, but he looks like he’s talking to himself, or maybe even singing.

When Steve turns back to Clint, he’s also watching Bucky, wearing a soft smile on his face.

 _“He’s_ the handyman,” Steve says with sudden clarity, remembering the note on the refrigerator, and Clint laughs.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “The hand irony was too much to not.”

It sticks in Steve’s throat, briefly, that however long Bucky’s been here, it’s been long enough for the pair of them to become close, to reach jokes-about-missing-arms stage, which feels disorienting and unfair because Steve still doesn’t feel like he can comprehend it.

He clears his throat, determined not to let his jealousy blend through, and asks instead,

“Who’s L?”

Unlike when Tony had asked – or, more accurately, _demanded_ – Clint grins.

“Laura,” he says cheerfully. “Ex-girlfriend. She’s got a nice setup pretty close by. Part of my deal when Fury recruited me, way back. He kept it off SHIELD records, thank God. Only other people who ever knew were Natasha and Coulson.”

Steve doesn’t ask, because it still isn’t for him to know.

Clint’s never backtracked on their early morning chat almost three years ago; they’ve never talked about it, and perhaps they never will.

But _Christ_ if Steve isn’t just a bit curious.

He doesn’t ask, though. He simply nods, glances at the screen again, drinking in the sight before him, as Clint continues,

“Bucky and Laura get on suspiciously well. He fixed her boiler one day while I was off with you guys, avenging and shit. Pretty sure she likes him more than me at this point.”

This time, jealousy does rear its ugly head.

Thankfully, Steve manages to strangle his kneejerk response on its way to his mouth, so all that actually comes out is a desperately eager,

“Can I see him?”

Clint hesitates, looking torn. His eyes dart to Bucky on the screen, then back to Steve, who feels like he’s just swallowed stones.

“Clint, please –”

“Hear me out, Steve, OK?” Clint says.

Steve does. It’s not his tone of voice that does it, not the way he says _Steve,_ so forcefully. That’s not what holds Steve’s tongue.

What holds his tongue is the way Clint takes a step diagonally back as he says it, as if ready to evade another punch. It’s not a flinch, or a wince; Clint doesn’t even seem to realise he’s done it.

It’s a lot like how Natasha always manages to avoid letting people stand directly behind her, or how Tony can fill another person’s silence as effortlessly as breathing.

The lessons learned in childhood, they stick. They don’t get unlearned.

Clint steps back, says _Hear me out,_ and Steve does, because there's already a faint bruise forming on Clint's jaw. He's already damaged that fragile trust once, maybe irreparably, judging by that instinctual backwards step out of harm's potential way.

“Bucky’s fine,” Clint says first, a premise, a promise. “He’s fine, but he’s afraid of what his reaction will be to seeing you. Given, you know. His last order from HYDRA.”

Steve tries, in the space of heartbeats, to imagine how that conversation must have gone. How exactly Bucky would have explained it. It leaves him with nothing but aches where he can’t bruise.

Clint looks similarly discomfited as he continues,

“We’ve done everything we can to help shake off HYDRA’s hold. And we can – we’ve talked about you, looked at photos, watched press footage. I even had you on speaker once, on the phone while he was in the room. He didn’t react badly at all.”

Clint ducks his head guiltily at that confession, his mouth screwing lemon twist awkward.

Steve does his best to smile encouragingly, but it feels tight and stretched across his face. It hurts, to know how close he’d been, yet never further away. It kills him to imagine it.

“That might not be the case in person, though,” Clint says apologetically, his shoulders a little closer to his ears than before. “And I would happily, _happily_ take that risk, and so would Bucky, and I guess so would you?”

Steve nods emphatically, despite the sad glaze of Clint’s expression, when he knows it won’t be enough.

“Except for three things,” Clint says, inevitably. “We can’t risk it when there’s a chance he could hurt you, right when we have a Stark murderbot on the loose. Also, I can’t take you to him without risking alerting the others, because Bucky definitely doesn’t want anyone else knowing yet.”

The harsh, protective voice is back, and this time it doesn’t grate on Steve. It’s actually a comfort, it’s _safe._ It’s the same voice Clint uses when he calls for Natasha on their comms when things are getting dicey, and really, what more could Steve ask for from Clint than that?

“And the third thing?” he asks, rather than voice this.

Clint grimaces.

“The third thing is, Nick Fury is almost definitely about the let himself into my house at any moment, and I’m not letting him even consider snooping further than he has to, because he doesn’t know either.”

Steve thinks it’s kind of adorable, that Clint seems to think he can hide anything from Nick. Then again, the idea that he _could_ goes some way to making Steve feel even better. He's already underestimated Clint enough for one day, after all.

He tries not to visibly deflate. Clint’s points are valid, after all. It would be stupid to risk a confrontation, and God knows Steve doesn’t feel in any kind of condition to engage in another violent clash with his long lost best friend. Whether or not he’s physically up for the task, there’s not a chance that he’s mentally or emotionally ready for that kind of fallout.

Some of this surrender must show in the way the last of his tension drains out of his hands and shoulders. He’s a little surprised he doesn’t melt right into the floor, with the jelly bone feel of his limbs.

Clint, on the other hand, actually brightens up a bit.

 _“But,”_ he says pointedly, before Steve can say anything too morose.

He pulls out a small burner phone from a drawer behind him, waving it gently in his hand.

“You could call him, if you want?”

*

When Bucky answers, staring up at the camera so it feels something closer to looking him in the eye, Steve’s knees hit the floor hard, and he chokes on a whole host of important things that deserve voicing.

Clint has a hand on his shoulder, tight and unyielding, and yes, OK, Steve’s fucking grateful after all.

*

Steve goes after them by himself, when the time comes.

He has to leave Bucky in Wakanda, because he’s hurting and because he’s still recovering from Princess Shuri’s first attempts at a HYDRA trigger sequence scrub; because if he gets caught it’ll be so much worse for him than for Steve.

He doesn’t have to say no to T’Challa when he offers more than just a jet and weaponry, but he does, because T’Challa isn’t just the Black Panther, he’s also a _King;_ because he needs to stay here with his people and because he shouldn’t be expected to pull a jailbreak when he’s already offering sanctuary to the jailbreakees.

He won’t call Natasha, because she’s gone dark while she claws her way out of General Ross’ path and because she’s shaking off enough demons as it is; because she’s going to need to sleep after hitting the ground running and she won’t do it without her best friend by her side.

He can’t call Tony, because Tony’s never going to forgive him for what he’s done.

Steve goes after them by himself, and that’s a mistake that Clint pays for over the course of what is undoubtedly the longest week of Steve’s life.

*

The longest week of Steve’s life begins like this.

*

Dark, cold, stone, stale, underground, drugs, metal, pain, nausea.

Steve knows, nowadays, how to take stock of himself before opening his eyes.

He wakes up, and is immediately able to determine three important things:

First. He’s been unconscious long enough to dry out after plunging into the ocean.

Second. He’s been drugged with something strong enough to knock back his enhanced metabolism, but not strong enough to obliterate it.

Third. He’s sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, both of which are cold, bare stone.

In fact, he’s not merely sitting. There’s a thick metal band, like a collar, pinning his head back to the stone. The halfmoon curve of it wraps close to his throat, the inside lined with very sharp teeth of metal, each end buried deep into the wall.

He thinks, maybe, he could force the metal out of the wall with enough pressure on his own. Except, with those metal shards digging into the vulnerable stretch under his chin, there’s a very high chance he’d bleed out before he managed, or perhaps even decapitate himself in his effort.

 _What a way to go,_ Steve thinks wryly.

It takes only another moment to count the other teethed bands of metal holding his elbows and wrists at ninety-degree angles from his body, as well as pinning his thighs and lower legs to the floor, outstretched and useless in front of him.

One final metal strap is biting hungrily into his torso, just the line of his lowest ribs.

Steve spares a moment to be impressed with the forethought of his captors, but is interrupted by a loud, enthusiastic voice exclaiming,

_“Hey! You’re awake!”_

There’s no way Barton would say as much if they weren’t alone, so Steve has no reason to keep his eyes shut.

He tries not to feel too bitter about how Clint knew he was awake in the first place. Clint knows lots of things he shouldn’t, and Steve is hardly in a place to begrudge that.

Steve opens his eyes, blinking sluggishly in the unpleasant, fluorescent light strip illuminating the room.

With his head forced to face forwards by the collar, he’s immediately confronted with the image of Clint Barton, who is quite thoroughly pinned into place, too.

Not, however, against a wall.

No, Clint is in a chair. A tall backed, raised chair, his legs strapped down, his arms outstretched and his head kept in place by a strap across his forehead. His eyes are foggy, and he’s grinning.

“Took you long enough. I even tried singing your theme tune, like it might jumpstart something. Nothing. I think you were actually snoring when they first brought you in.”

Steve doesn’t respond to this, because he knows he doesn’t snore, and he’s more concerned by the fretting, feverish quality of Clint’s speech.

Clint’s been stripped down to a pair of boxer briefs, and Steve can feel he’s been similarly dressed down.

It’s been something of a near-pattern over the years of avenging, how more often than not, of all the Avengers, Clint is the first to be underestimated, which has never made sense to Steve, but has had the fortunate side effect of meaning that half the time, Clint has been able to get them out of tight spots simply by not being as closely watched as the others.

 _I’m low threat compared to you guys,_ he’d said cheerily, once, as he slipped easily out of his restraints and proceeded to hum _Midnight Train to Georgia_ as he lazily untied his teammates from their own bonds, but not before killing all twelve guards that converged on them once the alarms went off.

For a guy carrying as much pride on his chipped shoulders as he is, Clint Barton really does seem to like being underestimated by the bad guys.

Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case this time.

Clint can’t so much as move his fingers, and by the looks of it, one wrong twist in those restraints would shatter one, if not both, of his kneecaps.

 “So,” Clint drawls in that drunken, consonant slipping voice. “The good news is, I threw the bird and the bug out of the jet before they brought us down.”

His eyes are glossy, and there’s blood on his neck that seems to be dripping from his head.

Not a fever, Steve realises with a lurch. A concussion.

Before he can reply, Clint continues.

“The bad news is, I threw the one with the magic fingers out of the jet before they brought us down, too.”

Steve can still taste the ocean burning in the back of his throat. He can recall Sam, shouting his name, his rising fury as the emergency hatch opened, his metals wings newly strapped back into place and his arms tight around Wanda, her own voice silenced by the choker they hadn’t dared break from around her throat.

She wouldn’t have been able to help, anyway. This, maybe, is for the best.

“You did the right thing,” he says, which is true.

He knows Sam, Scott and Wanda would probably disagree, but he can only hope Sam’s wings held out long enough with the extra weight to get them all out of the line of fire. Steve feels a twist of regret that he hadn’t been able to get Barton similarly out of harm’s way, too, but he’s beaten to the punch when Clint laughs wetly and says,

“Woulda thrown you out, too, Cap. If you hadn’t been so damn clingy.”

Clint blinks slowly, doesn’t seem so much tired as dazed. When he moves his head the fraction of an inch that he can, Steve catches a glimpse of dark red stains on the headrest of the chair.

“I know you would’ve, Hawkeye,” he says gratefully. “But I made two very important promises to two very important people that I’d watch your back. So, it looks like you’re stuck with me.”

This time, when Clint smiles, it’s a lot less frantic. He licks his lips and his eyes dart to his left. Steve glances as far right as he can, and sees a shut, undoubtedly locked metal door. Clint takes a rattling breath, and Steve eyes the contusions blossoming across his ribs. They’re dark, randomly placed, like the battering of a body tossed about a rattling jet before hitting the waves of an angry ocean.

There’s a handprint on his forearm, from where Steve had grabbed him, the dark violet shapes of Steve's fingers in his skin.

“You met our hosts, yet?” Steve asks before he can do something stupid like apologise, which he knows won’t go down well, even with a concussed Clint.

Clint swallows loudly, twitching his lips. There’s fresh blood between his front teeth.

“I did,” he says, then licks the blood way. “Fun guys. Not very talkative.”

“Do we know what they want?” Steve asks; he can feel something in his neck, like a wasp sting. It’s still running through his veins, whatever it is they've doped him with.

Clint makes a twitchy movement that would have probably have been a shrug, if every joint from his shoulders to his knuckles weren’t currently locked into place.

“I offered to build them an Iron Man suit, but they seem to doubt my capabilities.”

There’s something hard in those words, something that has to be more than leftover bad feeling from the fight at the airport. Steve hasn’t even had time to tell him about what happened in Siberia, yet. He wonders if Clint saw Tony at all, before Tony flew after them. If Tony was there, at the Raft.

Cowardly, foolishly, Steve doesn’t ask.

“Shows what they know,” he consoles instead, and Clint coughs out a rough laugh.

“Yeah,” he snickers, as more blood smears over his front teeth. “Just wait until they get us to arm wrestle. They’re gonna be real surprised.”

*

This is what Steve remembers.

Clint says, “Keep talkin’, Cap,” even though they’ve taken one of his hearing aids, and Steve knows just as well as Clint they’re only dragging it out for the fun of it, that they’ll take the other one eventually, and leave Clint in perpetual silence.

Clint says, “Jus’ talk t’me, Cap,” even though they’ve taken both of his hearing aids, and Steve talks to him with clear annunciation so that Clint can read his lips, follow the stories Steve tells him about all the shit Bucky pulled in their teens, and he knows Clint catches some of it because Clint laughs, sometimes, even though it sounds more like choking.

Clint says, “You know she’s coming for us,” even though he must know the chances of his own survival are a meagre fraction of Steve’s, and that what he really means is _She’s coming for you._

Clint says, “Plenny ‘f robohands where we’re goin’,” even though that does nothing to change how it must feel to have his fingers broken and sawed off, one by one over the course of four days, with a knife that wasn’t made to cut through bone.

Clint says, “He’s jus’ easy t’love, y’know,” even though Steve’s already apologised for all the godawful things he said about his poor friend when he realised what bright and brilliant thing had blossomed between him and Bucky during their time together on a secret farm living a secret life.

Clint says, “Tell ‘er i’ w’s quick,” even though Natasha’s going to take one look at his corpse and know it was anything but.

Clint says, “Keep talkin’, Cap,” and Steve talks to him.

Steve keeps talking even after Clint stops breathing.

He talks and talks and talks, until the world grows hushed, and the phantom of icicles take hold of his heart.

Until the door blasts open, and in walks a red and gold suit, that gleams like nothing ever has before.

*

Here’s where they end up.

Steve lies in a hospital bed in Wakanda.

Sam stands at the foot of the bed, one arm in a sling, the left side of his face still battered from tumbling out of a Quinjet carrying an unconscious witch and an ant sized man.

Bucky sits on Steve’s right side, gaunt with worry and grief, shaking.

Tony stands four steps in the doorway and says, “He died alone, and afraid, and in agony,” which is more true than it should be.

Steve says, “He was your friend, too,” which is true, as well.

Then Steve remembers the way that blade had scraped right across Clint’s eyes. The way the blood had sprayed out of his face and he had screamed in terror, screamed until they slashed his throat out, too.

Steve says terrible things that he only half means.

Tony responds in kind, and the weight of their flung accusations cripples Sam and Bucky between them like clenched glass.

Steve tells Tony,

“He thought you’d sold us out, you know. He died thinking you’d set us up.”

And Tony, he tells Steve,

“I’m pretty sure Hawkeye died wishing he’d never met you, Captain Rogers.”

*

Hawkeye didn’t die wishing he’d never met Steve Rogers.

*

A man like Steve Rogers befriends a man like Clint Barton easily.

It’s what happens after that’s difficult.

*

Steve keeps talking until the door blasts open, and in walks a red and gold suit that gleams like nothing ever has before.

“Hey, Cap,” the red and gold suit says, and the gold plate flips open, to reveal a familiar face.

“Tony,” Steve says, and it tastes of blood, and he thinks there might be something really wrong with his throat.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Tony says, incredibly quietly, incredibly gently, which Steve has a funny feeling would be confusing, if only he could remember why.

“Clint’s hurt, Tony,” Steve says, and Tony’s face creases and crumples, and his mouth slackens around his unwords.

“Yeah, he is,” Tony says, incredibly quietly, incredibly gently, which doesn’t make sense at all.

*

_Hey, Cap?_

Yeah, Hawk?

*


End file.
